One Game Can Change Your Life
by Metropolis Kid
Summary: While waiting for pizza, John plays an arcade game. He gets the top score, and his life becomes even weirder. One-Shot. Please Read and Review. Thanks.


**Top Score**

**Disclaimer**: I don't own any material contained within this story. All copyrighted content remains the property of the person, people, or organization that holds the copyright. This story is solely for fun.

**AN**: Okay, this may get a little _**weird**_. But it should all make sense by the end.

As far as John Connor's life went, it had been a pretty normal day and a good one. No one had tried to kill him. His mother and uncle were getting along okay, a rare occurrence in the Connor house. John didn't even have school. It was the Fourth of July, and summer vacation had already started. Finally, John had what should've been a fairly peaceful weekend ahead of him. Yup, John was pretty pleased with the way the day had been going.

He and his cyborg bodyguard were out getting a couple of pizzas for the family's Forth of July picnic when John happened to look over and see what was once his favorite arcade game.

John use to frequent the arcades a lot and he played many games, but none quite as much as the one he was looking at now. John guessed that he'd probably wasted close to a total of a hundred hours of his life and three hundred dollars worth of stolen money on the thing.

John put his hand in his pocket and felt around. He had three quarters. He figured why not kill some time while he and Cameron were waiting for the pizzas.

John walked over to the machine and dropped the first quarter in. The machine responded with, "Greetings Starfighter!"

John's first game lasted five minutes, and he only racked up one hundred thousand points. John was a little disappointed. He use to be able to get two hundred and fifty thousand without even trying.

John almost left the machine then, but the pizzas weren't ready yet. So, John played another game. He did better this time. He got up to four hundred thousand, a pretty respectable score.

After John's second game, Cameron came over with the pizzas. "John, the pizzas are ready. We should return home before their temperature decreases below desired levels."

John pulled the last quarter from his pocket and looked over at Cameron. "Just one more game."

John was lost in the last game, his mind consumed by the frenzy of the artificial space dog fight. To the other patrons he looked very much like a man on the brink of insanity. To Cameron he looked like the John she knew from the future.

Of course, John didn't notice the patrons stares or Cameron's almost approving look. He was too wrapped up in the game, too wrapped up in defending the Frontier against Xur and the Kodan Armada. John was so focused that he even lost track of the time and his score. It wasn't until John finally destroyed the command ship and beat the game that he realized he had also beaten the top score.

John was so overcome by the revelation, that he jumped up and threw a punch into the air. When he came back down, he looked at his 'sister'. "Did you see that! I got the top score!" John was very pleased with himself. He'd never broken the record before. He'd come close a couple of times, but the best he ever got was second place.

Cameron seemed unimpressed by John's victory over the primitive machine. She was pleased while watching him play it because he reminded her of his future self, but the way he was acting now made him look like a little kid. This was not her John. "Yes I did. May we return home now?"

Cameron's apathy took most of the wind out of John's sails. "You can be such a wet blanket sometimes."

Cameron cocked her head to the side. "I do not understand. I'm not a wet blanket."

John sighed. "It's just an expression for someone who takes the fun out of stuff."

Cameron righted her head. "Oh, thank you for explaining."

"Whatever. Let's just get going. The pizzas must be getting cold." The two left and headed for the park, where they would meet up with Sarah and Derek.

Everything seemed normal until the next afternoon when Cameron heard the house's door bell. She walked over and opened up the front door. There she saw Cromartie, now as Kester, standing in the doorway.

He reached out and grabbed Cameron by her throat. "Where is John?"

Cameron batted Kester's arm down. And brought her knee up into the terminator's gut. Kester went down. Cameron turned and went for the nearest weapon, a shotgun kept hidden under the couch.

Kester was down, but he was quick to recover. He reached out, grabbed Cameron's ankle and pulled. Cameron fell, but she was able to reach her hand under the couch. She gripped the shotgun and pulled it out while Kester was repeating his earlier question. "Where is…" Kester didn't get a chance to finish. He was interrupted by a shotgun blast to his face.

Kester's synthetic skin hung in tatters about his face, but the damage was more superficial than anything else. He kept one hand on Cameron's ankle as he grabbed the shotgun's barrel with the other. "Must you always make things so difficult?"

The sound of the shotgun blast, of course, got the other 'family' member's attention. Sarah and Derek rushed in from the back yard, 9 millimeters ready. They saw Cameron fighting with what was obviously a terminator and begun to empty their clips into Kester.

A few stray rounds and ricochets struck Cameron. She couldn't help but think, _Hey! Watch your fire. I'm on your side remember? _Of course, she would never voice how much it bothered her that Derek and Sarah viewed harming her as nothing more than collateral damage. Cameron didn't figure it would matter anyway. Sarah wasn't particularly fond of her, and Derek down right hated her. Cameron even wondered if a few of Derek's 'misses' might be intensional.

The gunfire barely slowed Kester down as he pulled Cameron beneath him. Cameron tried to squirm out of Kester's grip; but, although she was more advanced, her smaller frame made that difficult. It was then that John appeared at the top of the staircase. "Hey! Get off of my sister!"

Cameron couldn't believe what a stupid move John had made. He should of run when he heard the shotgun blast. That was what he'd been trained to do. He wasn't suppose to try to save her. It was suppose to be the other way around. _What could he possibly hope to accomplish anyway? Well, I suppose he might be planning on distracting Cromartie long enough for me to land a decent punch and turn the tide._

Kester looked up and identified his primary target. "John Connor, you will be termin…" Once again the terminator was unable to finish his statement as John ran down the stairs and tackled him. The force of the impact knocked Kester over. John held on to him with one hand and repeatedly punched his face with the other.

No one could believe what they were seeing. John Connor was taking on a terminator in hand to hand combat, and winning. If a giant, dancing, purple hippopotamus burst through the wall claiming to be Kyle Reese reincarnated, Sarah and Derek wouldn't have been more surprised. Cameron just kept feeding the information to her processors and running internal diagnostics. She was convinced that her CPU was glitching. Kester was doing much the same thing, except he was taking a tremendous beating while he attempted to find the malfunction.

Finally, after checking every system, Kester was forced to conclude that he wasn't malfunctioning and was indeed getting his ass kicked by John Connor. It didn't make any sense; but assured that there was no internal problem, Kester began to fight back. He managed to land a wallop of a right cross and knock John off of him.

Kester reached for the shotgun; but Cameron, who had also found no internal malfunction, kicked him square in the jaw, hard. Kester recoiled, and John jumped on his back. John wrapped his arms around Kester's neck and pulled as hard as he could. John grunted. He wasn't strong enough on his own. Cameron sat down behind him and wrapped her fingers around his. They threw their bodies back together and ripped Kester's head right off of his shoulders.

John and Cameron stood up, but Kester wasn't completely out of the fight yet. He still had remote access to his body. His decapitated body lunged at John and knocked him over. Kester's hands went for John's throat.

Cameron had already run into the kitchen. She opened up the tool drawer, pulled out a pair of pliers, used them to remove Kester's chip and smashed it on the counter.

The Terminator's body fell limp on top of John. Derek and Sarah ran over and pushed it off. Derek looked at John's neck, then tapped Sarah on the shoulder and pointed. "Something you want to tell me?"

Sarah just shook her head in disbelief. Kester had stripped some of the skin from John's neck, exposing metal and wires. She mouthed the word, "No." Then kicked 'John' in his side and screamed, "What have you done with him!"

The John imposter sat up and replied, "You know, I don't like being kicked by people I'm trying to help."

"You think I care what a terminator likes! Where's my son!"

"Relax. He's safe. Well, safe may not be the right word; but he's probably fine." The imposter pointed up. "He's up there, somewhere, defending the Frontier against Xur and the Kodan Armada; and I'm not a terminator. I'm a fully functional, state of the art, Beta Unit."

Somewhere up in space: John was standing in the briefing room, uniform in his outstretched arms. "No you don't understand. Listen to me! I've got to get back. I can't do this. All I did was get the top score on a video game!" John felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder. He turned around to look into the face of a man who must've been in his late forties or early fifties.

The man smiled, "Don't worry kid. You'll do fine. That's how they got me too." The man moved his hand from John's shoulder and held it out to shake. "Alex Rogan, pleased to meet you."

John shook the man's hand. "John…" He hesitated for a moment, then gave his real name. He doubted that it would get back to any terminators. "John Connor, and I just want to go home."

(Well, what did you think? Reviews are greatly appreciated. Thanks. Oh, and incase you still don't know, this is a Terminator/Last Starfighter crossover.

Have a good day, and God bless.

Metropolis Kid.)


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